IFRSs and XBRL

Both IFRSs and XBRL are intended to standardise financial reporting in order to promote transparency and to improve the quality and comparability of business information, therefore the two form a perfect partnership.

The IASB XBRL Team is responsible for developing and maintaining the XBRL representation of the IFRSs, known as the IFRS Taxonomy. The IFRS Taxonomy is used around the world to facilitate the electronic use and exchange of financial data prepared in accordance with IFRSs.

The IASB's XBRL activities include:

Taxonomy development - for companies reporting in IFRS, the Foundation publishes tags for each IFRS disclosure. These tags are organised and contained within the IFRS Taxonomy.

Support materials - the Foundation produces support materials to facilitate use and understanding of the IFRS Taxonomy.

Translations - translations of the IFRS Taxonomy into key languages are provided to support users of IFRSs and the IFRS Taxonomy whose primary language is not English.

Global outreach - the Foundation makes a concerted effort to promote the use of XBRL in conjunction with IFRSs around the world. The Foundation also encourages co-operation and communication with users of the IFRS Taxonomy.

About XBRL

XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is a digital 'language' that was developed to provide a common, electronic format for business and financial reporting. In XBRL, mark-up tags are used to make business information computer-readable and consumable.

XBRL is a data-rich dialect of XML (Extensible Markup Language), the universally preferred language for transmitting information via the Internet. It was developed specifically to communicate information between businesses and other users of financial information, such as analysts, investors and regulators. XBRL provides a common electronic format for business reporting. It does not change what is being reported. It only changes how it is reported.

A typical business report on an Internet page is a closed and self-contained document. Although it can be viewed and transmitted using the Internet, its format and content is fixed; neither the format nor the content can be changed unless you change the Internet page. To extract the information from such a report for computerised analysis requires exporting or re-keying the data into a format that can be consumed by computer software.

A business report that has been prepared using XBRL (known as an instance document) is different because the information contain in the document is not closed and does not have a predefined, fixed format. Information that has been tagged using XBRL is 'interactive' because it it can be recognised, processed, stored, exchanged and analysed automatically by computers using software.

About XBRL tags

In XBRL, information is not treated as a static block of text or set of numbers. Instead, information is broken-down into unique items of data (eg total liabilities = 100). These data items are then assigned tags which make them computer-readable. For example, the tag <Liabilities>100</Liabilities> enables a computer to understand that the item is liabilities, and it has a value of 100.

Computers can treat information that has been tagged using XBRL 'intelligently'; they can recognise, process, store, exchange and analyse it automatically using software. Because XBRL tags are formed in a universally-accepted way, they can be consumed and processed by any computer that has XBRL software.

XBRL tags are defined and organised using categorisation schemes called taxonomies. For a company reporting in IFRS, the IFRS Foundation publishes tags for each IFRS disclosure, which are contained in the IFRS Taxonomy.

For more information on taxonomies and the IFRS Taxonomy, please click here.